other people’s gardens
It’s a beautiful day today, the sun is shining and a light breeze is blowing. When we went down the road wait for the bus it was about 50 degrees. A perfect day for a long walk. As soon as I got Josh off to school I headed up the hill.
I took a slightly new route this time and I walked for just over an hour. My pedometer tells me I went 1.4 miles but Google maps says the route is 2.8 miles. Hmmm. I think I’ll believe Google this time thanks! I’m assuming since I was walking fast I was taking longer strides than what I set my pedometer for!
When I walk through neighborhoods I catch myself being a bit of a peeping tom. A typical nosy neighbor who can’t keep her eyes to herself. But it’s not people I’m looking at. (In fact the fewer people I see while I walk the happier I am.) It’s their plants, their trees, their landscape design that I’m checking out. Or lack thereof.
While I truck along I take it all in. Perfectly set rock gardens with phlox and alysum, mulched beds overflowing with gerberas and tulips, and shady spots filled with bleeding hearts and hostas. I love the big flowering trees, huge lilacs, and sweet weeping cherries. I wish I had space for all of them.
I have a soft spot for cute little japanese maples with delicate spidery red leaves. I had one at my old house and I loved it. I want one here but I haven’t figured out the perfect spot yet, and they’re expensive.
I glance a bit jealously at sunny yards, mine is so much shade. I envy the ease in which they can choose plants, everything is harder to grow on my lot and I have to carefully research what will survive here. But then I remember August and how my lawn will stay cool and green, if a bit mossy, while theirs will dry up in the heat. Maybe those people walk by my home and envy my towering pines and maples, even though they make my soil turn acid.
I keep going and I wonder at the houses with the neglected plants, weeds choking out the flowers, and overgrown bushes and dead limbs crowding my sight. Do the owners forget about it all out of hardship or just apathy? As I walk on by my brain can’t help but plan out their space. A rhododendron would be perfect here, a little trimming of the forsythia there, some grass seed to fill out the lawn.
Eventually I make it back to my own driveway. My critial eye takes in the stretch of land I work so hard on. I judge it harshly, but I remember how much worse looked when we first saw it a few years ago. I look at my thriving stonecrop and lilies and bee balm and I know I did that. I love the new butterfly bush and azaleas that I bought on mother’s day.
Other people’s gardens fascinate me, but I love my own little bit of earth.
the tulip
For some reason, I get lots of tulip greenery popping up in my garden each year, but only one ever blooms.
It’s always gorgeous.
I just wonder what’s wrong with the rest of them.
Are they intimidated?
what I did yesterday
I got my hands dirty!
And I loved every minute of it.
Filed Under gardening, photos Tagged flowers, gardening, pansies, photos
37
Ever since I’ve had a home of my own, I’ve bought myself flowers to plant on my birthday. When I lived in Virginia I could buy pretty much anything I wanted and put it in the ground right away, but up here in New Hampshire I have one choice - pansies. They’re the only flower that won’t die on me before mid-May.
As soon as the nursery down the road from me opens this morning I’ll be there buying as many purple pansies as I can. Happy Birthday to me!
(Last year’s pansies!)
Do you ever do anything special just for yourself on your birthday?
Please remember Maddie and Thalon in your prayers today.
chicks!
I had one of those great weekends where I lived my life instead of being stuck on the computer.
Friday night I spent hours at my friend Nicole’s making these for a bake sale on Saturday:
Really freaking cute but a really big pain to make! They are Bakerella’s cake pops and they were of course, a huge hit at the bake sale. (Dang, we should have charged more!) I think we did pretty well for our first try at these. The funniest part was when someone saw them and recognized them from her site!
Those chicks are so cute you could just eat’em! But no I did not. Not one single bite. Josh’s face lit up when he bit into one though, so I know they were good.
After our very successful bake sale, I had to brave that special kind of he!! known as Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon since I had put off the trip all week. I survived, but barely. What was I thinking?! You can bet I needed a nap after that!
Today we all spent most of the day outside enjoying the beautiful weather. It was 55 and sunny. Perfect for yardwork. I raked for hours, uncovering all sorts of lovely green things popping up. Including these little cuties:
One of my hens had chicks! Hee hee, you really have to go read the old post to get this. These are one of my favorite plants - partly because they are really hard to kill. Just so you know the size - those chicks no bigger than my thumb. They look larger here than they really are.
We also just had a bit of fun outside, Josh riding his bike and DH and I shooting some hoops in the driveway. Josh has been practicing his “chimney climb” and he begged me to take this photo and put it on my blog - yes, he knows I have a blog but he doesn’t really get that other people see it!
Frankly, I was pretty impressed not just that he could do it, but how long he could hold it! I’m very certain I couldn’t do that. Maybe by this time next year though. Heh.
So what did you all do this weekend? I hope you had nice weather to enjoy too!
Filed Under family, gardening, photos, the boy Tagged baking, gardening, hen and chicks, spring, the boy
tree frog
I did a little yard work on Sunday, cleaning up the dead tomato and cucumber plants, and putting all my gardening tools and pots away in the shed. I cursed the trees as I watched tons of leaves rain down in the few hours I was outside. Fall is my favorite time of year, and this is when you’ll find me outside most often.
The best part of the day was finding a couple of visitors - no - not the dead chipmunk George left for me. We have a lot of little frogs around, and two made an appearance as I moved their hiding places. I insisted we get a picture of one, because his gray and black markings were so cool.
Wanna see him close up?
What a cute little bugger. I’m pretty sure this on is a gray tree frog - see his sticky toes?
I love frogs and toads. When we first moved here we didn’t have any because the previous owner’s dogs had killed them all. (George completely ignores them.) We’ve watched the population grow over the last 2 years, and now we have a good healthy mix of them. I think it’s part of reason we didn’t have quite as many mosquitoes this summer as last year.
My frogs are definitely wanted visitors.
We also have some unwanted visitors - mice love our shed. Last year we made the mistake of leaving a bag of grass seed in there, and unbeknownst to us, it kept them will fed all winter long. (We don’t go in the shed in the winter, it’s only used for storing summer stuff.) We, meaning DH, cleaned out the scattered seed and the mice nests, but we’d like them to stay away. I thought about putting some moth balls in there but I’m not sure it would work. I don’t want to put traps or poison out. Going back in the spring to a bunch of decaying carcasses isn’t my idea of a good time! Any ideas how to just keep them out?
who cares about a title, it’s just bullets today
- TGIF!
- The boy has been out of school yesterday and today. There’s something wrong with the plumbing, and the older kid classes have taken over the pre-k and kindergarten rooms (where they have their own bathrooms) They can cancel pre-k and k because there aren’t requirements for how many days they have to attend school per year. It makes sense - by keeping grades 1-4 in session they don’t have to make up the days later - but still bites for me!
- With nothing better to do we headed out to the library this morning. I just got home to find the fly on my jeans unzipped. Yay for tunic length shirts! Dumb, dumb, dumbass.
- TGIF!!
- I have had this headache on and off for a couple of weeks. At first I thought it was a sinus thing, but now I’m beginning to suspect it’s my eye prescription. My eyes haven’t changed in about 5 years, but I’m due for an optometry visit. If it’s changed I’ll need both new glasses and new contacts. Dang $.
- It would probably help my eyes if I didn’t stare at a computer screen 18 hours a day, eh?
- More than just my headache would be better if I had less screen time, my dishes would be done, the laundry would be put away, the rugs vacuumed…heh. Oh well!
- Speaking of screen time, if you’ve seen me on twitter the last few days you’ll notice a change in my avatar. We’re turning twitter pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Let me know if you do it too!
- Thank you to everyone who commented on my business cards! I had them printed exactly as shown (they’re clearer in person, I swear!) at Fed Ex - $20 for 200 cards.
- And speaking of comments - I love you all for your moisturizer advice! Seriously. I bought the Aveeno Ultra Calming Daily Moisturizer, as suggested. I couldn’t believe how many choices Aveeno had, and this one seemed like the best bet for me. This stuff is fantastic! Not greasy at all, and has the spf I needed.
- TGIF!!!
- Okay, dumb gardening question. What do you know about growing hot peppers? I have some Kung Pao mix growing - long and thin, and still very green. Frost is coming soon. If I pick them green will they continue to ripen and get red like a tomato does? If not, they’re still edible green, yes? I have A LOT of them (plants are in a big pot on the front porch) and I intend to freeze them. Do I do it whole or trim and seed them first? Can you tell I’ve never grown hot peppers before??
- Speaking of gardening, did I mention that I did not have to buy a single tomato all summer long?! We had tons of them just from the three pots (and almost none from the real garden, sigh) on the porch. I’m planting container gardens forever more.
- Good god, a work email just came in that I’ve been waiting on all week. Must go deal with it, and then?
- TGIF!!!!
Have a great weekend, mwah!
Filed Under blogging Tagged blogging, bullets, gardening, the boy, work
the great cucumber experiment
I have to interrupt my own post to tell you that chapter 10 of ChapterBytes, fantastically written by Danielle, is ready to read! Now, on with the program…
Who knew when I decided to put one cucumber plant in a pot and the rest in the backyard garden that I was really conducting a huge scientific experiment?!
Cucumber plant in the ground:
A couple of pathetic leaves and one sad little flower. All five of the plants in the garden are exactly the same.
Now here’s the cucumber plant in the pot on my front porch, mind you it was planted the same day:
This gorgeous plant has already produced one scrumptious cuke that I harvested and we ate yesterday, and there are two more beauties waiting to be picked. (Yes. Yes, I did eat a couple bites of that cucumber - something on my do-not-eat list, but I couldn’t help myself. It was sweet and crunchy and let’s just say I paid dearly for those bites.)
Anyway, It’s pretty much the same with the tomato plants, though not quite so drastic a difference. I’m convinced container gardening is the way for me! You can bet I’ll do this again next year.
Filed Under gardening Tagged container gardening, cucumbers, gardening, tomatoes
it’s kinda like, hot out
I’ve been planting tomatoes and cucumbers this morning. I bought them last week but never got a chance to put them in the ground. Unfortunately, it’s 93 degrees out right now and it’s supposed to be in the 90’s and upper 80’s all week. I was afraid if I didn’t get them planted they would burn up!
The nursery that I love, love, love had them on sale for $2 for a flat of 6! That’s just crazy talk! So now I have twelve (!) tomato plants and six cucumbers. If you’re as plant dorky as I and you’re wondering what varieties I got, I have Better Boy, which is very standard, and Arkansas Traveler, which is a pink heirloom type and I can’t wait to try it. Yum! I always love to buy heirloom tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market so I thought I might as well grow some myself.
I’m testing each of the plants in large containers on my front porch, and the rest went into the backyard. I don’t have the best property for a backyard garden, (way too many shade trees), so I’ve been wanting to try out container gardening. If you’ve done it and have any tips - let me know!
Filed Under gardening Tagged container gardening, cucumbers, gardening, tomatoes
trees blooming everywhere
Over the last two weeks most of my trees have come into bloom and I been taking a few pictures. Sundays are always a good day for gardening (or like today, just plain ole yard work) and of course that always make me want to talk about gardening!
The first picture is my little mystery. It’s a very pretty little tree on the edge of the woods that looks like a scrub tree for much of the year, but for about a week it looks like this. It blooms at the same time as my flowering cherry but I don’t think it is one because the leaves don’t have serrated edges. Does anyone know what it might be?
Next up is my very traditional hot pink rhododendron. It just love it.
Okay, now here is my (formerly) least favorite bush on my property. It’s so big it might as well be a tree. Last year it was in poor shape and I thought about whacking it back to ground level and seeing if it would regenerate. At the time, I really didn’t care if it did or not. Somehow white flowers seem a little pointless. I like pinks and purples and yellows, but white? Meh. Well, I’ve changed my mind and I’m really happy I didn’t mess with it, because, just look at this white azalea:
Imagine, it’s five feet tall, and five feet wide, and completely full of flowers. Gorgeous! It’s doing much better than my poor little pink azalea in the backyard that has neither flowered or leafed out. That one might be in for the whacking instead. And no I’m not going to show you a picture of the poor thing!
Now, what flowering tree post would be complete without a lilac? Certainly not this one!
I love lilacs. I’ve wanted lilacs at every place I’ve ever lived, but never had them until now. Can’t you just smell it??
Hope you’re all having a great Memorial weekend!!
Filed Under gardening Tagged azaleas, flowers, gardening, lilacs, rhododendrons